A good hunternever lets anyone touch his toolshis bow his arrows his spearthus our pens guardedthe notebooks & keyboards with masksD.D. Kosambi says vaguratrap or snarecan refer to a writerantler research is one pathher breasts are like birdsongs another

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Standing near theorigin of thingsall creatures rocks treesthe moon the riverspeak a common languagehere you don’t do things for justany old reasonyou respect things you don’t break offa branch you don’t crush a leafeven in dream her breastsare two songs of one bird

No you don’t just go out & talktrash to a grizzlythe name ‘bear’ is already a ritualdistortion, the brown onewith a heart like a clear springshould you go to the edge of the berry patchshould you step over the rimthe perilous weave of double thisdouble that: (is a poemfor girls who play hand games)

*

September in Shadow Canyonbear droppings plum pitschoke cherries the trail winds throughpines to Bear Peak young womenample breasted making the climbdouble double thisdouble double thatsquawberry crabapple-seeds plum-pitssomething tasting like lemon-grassdouble this double thatdouble double this that

*

What if you are a writer,do you jump over the dictionaryinsult etymologiesgo looking for trouble ormake fun of meaningshere’s a world where knowledge brings troublewords have a life of their owneach a tiny imagist poemI blow across etymologieslike girls who jump over bearshit

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They convey swift thoughtacross great distancethey do it with po-o-kan-tehow many friends rise or lumber bear-likeone old friend offers beadworkhe suggests the Western Diamondbackpattern as the rattlesnake showsgreat care with boundariesno, Dale, give me the Poison Path—film of blindness no boundary

*Out there curves a steepgeographic terrainit links to the spirit worldyou can sharpen yourteeth on coffee that’s brewed thereeven to whistle there’sa gesture that intensifies the neseihi—the wildness where the tiny dryfruit of the squawbushpuckers into a mask

*

Tells it to him makesfun of himI have pretty teeth & large breaststook half of her tied to him he uncovered himfractured his head gave himmedicine“In short the undetermined, and to this writer’s mind, fundamentalproblem of Arapaho, Fox, and Algonkin in general is whether theselanguages say ‘he-enters-looks,’ ‘he-enters-lookingly,’ or ‘enteringly-he-looks’”night darkness beadwork, grease cover hide

*

Like wood, stone, ivory, or boneit is a substancefull, old, roundedsoft as amber, enduring,the next two songs are soold we’ve forgottenthe wordsinside them the black wing of a crowno one can seeit but us

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Word comes of DilipChitre’s deathwho spent his life chiseling objectsfrom the poets of long-agoMaharashtrathe ones who sang by the riverbankMuktabai so wild she atediamonds & said no, nowe Vakaris we do not hide out from lifeat eighteen a flash of purple lightningshe vanished, dear Dilip

*

These songs without talentbeneath their poisonous fonetiksmay they carry prayer& good medicinewoxu’ and howoo’oot our voicesour subtle human rhythmscan we be generous, cook for each other?were we as the Haida say broughtfrom the soil for this purpose?can we speak to animalsit’s true we throw fabulous parties

*Dilip your name means—possibly, protectorquestion mark, of Delhidown the page diganta is sky’s endrim of the horizonhow the eye sees thecomrade go smokes after deathcedar puffs white sage blue beadsperhaps remote once far distanthorizon’s end more will we meet

*

The poems “from the Arapaho Songbook” began to take shape from studies in Arapaho, an Algonkian tongue (also spelt Algonquian). I saw excursions into the language as a way of going deeper into long-term bioregional studies—I live along the Rocky Mountain Front Range of Colorado—& the concern to get closer to plant, animal, rock, weather, or hydrological cycles, by way of the Native words that held them. Language being where mind & environment meet; and Arapaho a familiar to these ecosystems long before Spanish, French, or English got in.

It turns out that Andrew Cowell, a linguist at University of Colorado, and Alfonso Moss, Senior, a native speaker from the Wind River Reservation, had just issued a technical, very serviceable Arapaho grammar. Cowell I have gotten to know, and with him have walked the high country to the Continental Divide talking linguistics & plant lore. This, plus the re-workings he & Moss have done of songs originally collected by James Moody (1888) and Frances Densmore (1936) got me into the poetry.

hohoot niibootneniibeit-owoo

The cottonwood songI am singing it

Arapaho Ghost Dance, song #13

Arapahoe is, moreover, the major east-west running avenue I both live & work along, named for the two peaks (once called ‘Pawnee fort’) that appear to pitch skywards from its west end. The peaks are spelt Arapaho, without the e. Much of our water comes from the glacier—also Arapaho—lying in a cirque formed by the ridgeline. So the songbook has these referents. It draws vocabulary from Spanish, Sanskrit, Chinese, & Ute. Arapaho remains central though, even though the complicated grammar rebuffs me.

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